The only IEI I can be pretty sure of works for the federal government in the department of health. She is also very active in her church and volunteers for a charity to do with infant care as well as evangelic travel. While her occupation is important to her, I find that the relationships with people in order to further her strong values are what is most important. This does not always come directly or most profoundly from her paid position as a civil servant. But it's a necessary ingredient. She gets most of her satisfaction in her private contributions, I believe.

"Moral crusaders with zeal but no ethical understanding are likely to give us solutions that are worse than the problems." Charles Colson, How Now Shall We Live?

Short job history: My dad runs a small TV production company, I worked for him all through high school and college, I got an internship at a larger TV company, now I have a semi-career started as an assistant editor working in the middle of the night. It's not ideal and kinda lonely when you're the only one working all night (and it's hard to see people during the day because like, other people have a real life schedule), but it has a nice balance of freedom and structure, and you can generally just work for the length of one TV show and then it's no hard feelings if you leave and do something else (I mean it's basically expected). I'm probably going to go teach for a year or two starting this September cause I lucked into a cool teaching opportunity in another country (yay adventure!). Also I can live SUPER cheap so I like to work for three or four months then take a few months off and live off of the money left over from the job.

Long term I want to direct plays, but thus far that has translated into directing things when someone asks me or I reply to an ad and actually get a call (email) back. You're supposed to create your own opportunities as a director and like just summon productions out of nothing, but I'm not really entrepreneurial enough for that (I always said I wouldn't want to run my own company; my parents both do more or less entrepreneurial things). Ideally I'd be the artistic director of a repertory theater company I'd start, but I dunno if I'll ever actually do that. I have to confess I occasionally daydream about finding some kind of theater-making partner or producer to work with---I always work better on a team than solo. That's probably a stereotypically socionics thing, right: IEI seeks External Sensation-loving artistic partner to generally inspired, nudge, prod, and encourage IEI into getting more work done. Not sure if the daydream is a consequence of too much socionics when I was a teenager or what.

More pragmatically, I might migrate over to the producer side and be a reality TV producer. That's not going to happen automatically but it's very likely if I worked long enough and asked enough people to let me produce. It's a little sleazy (I mean, there's just a lot of implicit lying in it), but I'd enjoy it enough, I think. And I can always write poetry on the side, like Wallace Stevens (TV producer by day, poet by night!) I've always wanted to be a field producer---flying out to random locations, interviewing strangers, sleeping in hotel rooms. That would be really fun for a few years.

IEIs, what do you do?

For the IEIs out there (or for anyone who knows IEIs), what do IEIs do for a living? Do you enjoy it? If you are in school or unemployed what job/ career do you aspire to have in the future? I am very curious to know .

I got a uni degree in something I dislike and am currently attempting to change direction in my career path but not sure where to go. It raises the question: what are IEIs even good at? It seems like most jobs want someone very extroverted and energetic or they are more for a logical type like business and STEM fields. How do you deal with Te polr? Any psychologists out there? Anyone self-employed?

The IEIs I know and are very close to are absolute bookworms and are doing undergraduate in Electrical engineering (male) and Pharmacy (female). They read a lot, attend every class and pass their exams. A bit boring too; might I add hehe.

I made a list of most (about twelve) of the IEI's that I know and what they do. It's here on the site somewhere, but I don't know how to search for it and I don't feel like trying to reproduce it.

IEI's are good at Ni and Fe. The best, actually.

If you were an IEI-Fe, you could be an actor or a company diplomat/negotiator. But as an IEI-Ni, you might be better as an artist, writer, or possibly a therapist. You are running multiple scenarios in your head 24/7 and doing not much that produces tangible results, so you need a job that requires flexible thinking and not one where you put the left front tire on the car on the assembly line.

Furthermore, you need bosses or customers who appreciate your talents and let you do stuff in your own way at your own pace.

The IEI's whom I know deal with Te badly. When I (a Te-dom) try to help them, they often think I'm making fun of them or trying to prove they are idiots, which is not at all the case. It's just the stance of the vulnerable. I happen to have grown up with a favorite cousin who is IEI and I love her, but if I didn't accept her for who she is and appreciate her unique talents, I might think she had some large blank spaces where her brains should be. (This is not to say that IEI's aren't smart. Every single one I know is very much above average in intelligence. You just have to be careful about how you measure that intelligence.) This is going to be the impression most IEI's make with most LxE's. (My ILI-Te buddy can't stand her.) An IEI-Fe whom I know is a manager in a tech company but she is the most stressed person I know. She "manages" through diplomacy and clearly is out at sea when it comes to Te stuff. (I still like her. We've dated. )

A few of the IEI's I know are self-employed. Probably because they've had trouble with most bosses in most jobs. IEI's tend to like to do things their own way. Two of the IEI's that I know are counselor/therapists.

Most IEIs I know are musicians like playing guitar, sax, keyboard, also DJ. Another one is event manager and runs his own company. Another one works in sales and marketing and has business suit, in husbands company.
During my career I also met some in Information Technology, like one in 3rd line support, one in network engineering, one in desktop support.
I also met one as vice chief of support in large multinational company.

Yeah, I feel you... the job world wasn't made for IEI. You literally have to fake it until you make it.

My IEI-Ni friend from high school became an art therapist and seems to enjoy it. I personally think IEI would generally do well in areas like psychology, science and literature.

Yeah, there was an IEI I was giving career advice on as she didn’t really know what she wanted to do. And I sort of got to the bottom of it by suggesting that it sounded like she was pretty content to be a stay at home partner. I asked her if she would get bored during the day doing not much and she wasn’t worried about that at all saying she can easily pass the time alone with her own thoughts.

IEIs I’ve known have been amazing photographers, writers, and librarians. The librarian I know worked in a rough public school where education was poor. She purchased graphic novels and comics to inspire reading, and hid Willy Wonka golden tickets in random books to reward kids.

And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won't he more surely care for you?- Matthew 6:30

Projection is ordinary. Person A projects at person B, hoping tovalidate something about person A by the response of person B. However, person B, not wanting to be an obejct of someone elses ego and guarding against existential terror constructs a personality which protects his ego and maintain a certain sense of a robust and real self that is different and separate from person A. Sadly, this robust and real self, cut off by defenses of character from the rest of the world, is quite vulnerable and fragile given that it is imaginary and propped up through external feed back. Person B is dimly aware of this and defends against it all the more, even desperately projecting his anxieties back onto person A, with the hope of shoring up his ego with salubrious validation. All of this happens without A or B acknowledging it, of course. Because to face up to it consciously is shocking, in that this is all anybody is doing or can do and it seems absurd when you realize how pathetic it is.

What I do for a living... I work in a information services, it's mainly admin work. I do my job well and in return, no overtime just 9-5, you can buy and sell holidays, good pay. The traditional company culture is right for me at the moment, I had a bad time at my last sales job. When I read this article a light bulb went off in my head about why it was depressing in my last job and why it felt so inauthentic to me, read: https://resources.workable.com/blog/...ob-requirement

id definitely pursue a career in combing music & visual media.

From wiki: A music supervisor is a person who combines music and visual media. According to The Guild of Music Supervisors, a music supervisor is “a qualified professional who oversees all music related aspects of film, television, advertising, video games and other existing or emerging visual media platforms as required.”

^ The creative aspect above would not be"work" for me! Although it's worth a mention that a lot of the work isn't the creative part, a large part of it involves the licensing and practical side of music acquisition, plus supervisors have to stay within a budget.

Customer service, secretaries & administrative assistants, human resource help, clerical workers, payroll administrators. These are some of the more common historical roles. I am not inclined to think they were all too happy about it either.